Bulletin Board September - October 2008 Jo is retiring Jo Kimes has announced to the ASCA® Board and to the Membership that she is retiring in 2009. We will all miss Jo more than we can say; Jo is ASCA®, and ASCA® is Jo! We are looking for a replacement for Jo because, regretfully, we have to. The July – August Aussie Times has the job description. If ASCA® is a passion for you, and you have great organizational skills, e-mail communication skills, and a lot of patience working with volunteers, ASCA® may be looking for you. Please review the job description and follow the application directions included with that announcement. Important Office payment information for ASCA Members from other nations English: Effective 1/1/2008 the Business Office will no longer accept cash monies as a payment option for member services. German: Ab 1.1.2008 akzeptiert das Business Office kein Bargeld mehr als Zahlungsmittel fuer Mitglieder. Big thank you After many years as ASCA®’s Aussie Times Obedience Editor, Sandy Case has resigned from editing her column. She is very busy running her own training school. We have to thank Sandy for providing ASCA®’s Obedience enthusiasts with excellent articles which have inspired new participants and helped many others. Obedience Hotline has been an Aussie Times staple, and we will all miss it. I hope that Sandy will continue to favor us with articles from time to time. So, we need a new Obedience Editor. If you love Obedience, if you love to write, if you can provide a column every other month by the deadline, and if you would like to be considered for this position, please send your resume with a writing sample to Jo Kimes. New on the ASCA website From ASCA’s Web Team, Maarten Walter and Heidi Mobley: We’ve have rolled out a new piece to the www.asca.org website. Under My ASCA Membership, ASCA Members are now able to update their own membership information online. Please click on My ASCA Membership to get started. Why should you do this? Once you have logged in, and over 1000 ASCA® Members have, mouse over "My ASCA Membership" and the following new tab is now active. 1. Dog Results - Type in the dog's registration number, and we display all the show/trial results for that dog. 2. Dog show Results - Select a date and we display all the dog show/trial results for that date.
In addition, there is a calendar which includes all upcoming events for which the Office has a show flier that can be made into a pdf. Please include fliers with your sanctioning requests for the earliest posting of your event. Aussie Times ad in a new size Now available: Business card sized ads! See our advertising pages for rates and details. Promoting ASCA® The Board is looking for a volunteer to coordinate and work on promotion of ASCA® in other publications. This person could also help by soliciting advertising for the Aussie Times. If you have time to give to ASCA® in either or both of these functions, please let Jo Kimes know that you are interested. Nationals Updates See the March-April issue of the Aussie Times for the premium list for the 35th Australian Shepherd Club of America National Specialty being held in Las Vegas, Nevada, from November 8 to November 15, 2008. Entries are now open through September 8, 2008 for pre-entry, with an extended date of October 10, 2008 (with a higher fee). Please keep these dates in mind as you make your plans regarding ASCA registration for the dogs you wish to enter. The plans are in the works for an ASCA® Nationals Vegas-style! The ASCA® Board is pleased that the 2009 Nationals will be hosted by the Colorado Australian Shepherd Club. We will return to Greeley September 26 - Oct 3rd, 2009 for another great ASCA® Nationals. The ASCA® Board is accepting applications for 2010 and beyond, so if your Club is interested in hosting the Nationals please send in your application to Jo Kimes. Reminder from the Registrar – Sires, Dams and DNA Applications for Litter Registration from Sires and/or Dams producing their third litter will not be processed until the Sire and/or Dam has been DNA profiled with an ASCA® approved lab and recorded as DNA-CP or DNA-VP with the ASCA® Registrar. Effective January 1, 2006. This requirement means that Sires and/or Dams must be DNA Profiled before their third litter can be registered. Registrations of litters may be held up while this DNA Requirement is being fulfilled. Please send a copy of your registration or litter registration to Therion with the DNA Samples. This will help them decipher handwritten applications without having to contact the Office for assistance. Registry fees (and other fees) have gone up, so please check the rates sheet that was in the July-August 2007 issue. Another Registry reminder Recently, the Board has had a bunch of requests to change birthdates for litters, colors of pups in a litter, and the sexes of pups in a litter. Please check and double check your litter applications for accuracy to be sure what you send to the Office is correct. Once you receive your Individual Registration Papers, please check them for accuracy as well.
It’s always easier to get an error fixed right away than to wait until it has to go to the Board as an exception. The Board passed the following change to the Registry Rules at the March Meeting that all corrections like the above will be follow the following Rule: 6. Requested amendments to a registered litter by the litter owner (i.e. sex, quantity, etc) must be supported by presentation of pertinent documents to the Registrar within a thirty (30) day period from date of litter registration for approval without DNA testing and verified parentage through ASCA’s official lab. Requests for change of quantity require testing after thirty (30) days; change of sex requires testing at sixty (60) days; request for change of color at six (6) months. Other requests will be presented to the ASCA Board of Directors for review and final decision within thirty (30) days. Another important reminder for reporting show and trial results The fee for submitting show results late, after the 15-day postmark date, is now $10 per day instead of $1 per day for all venues. Late sanctioning penalties come down At their Spring 2008 Board Meeting the late sanctioning fee was reduced from Fifty Dollars ($50.00) per day to Twenty-Five Dollars ($25.00) per day for the first three (3) days to increase to Fifty Dollars ($50.00) thereafter. Affiliate Clubs have free space What do you mean free space? Affiliate Clubs have space in the Aussie Times once a year for a club report to be included in Affiliate News. This update for the Membership is the responsibility of the Affiliate Rep. for each Club. Of course, the Club also has the responsibility to ensure that what is submitted by the Rep. is accurate. What Clubs will be featured in the upcoming issues of the Aussie Times? The Affiliate Clubs that are in the following states are scheduled for space in the November - December 2008 issue (deadline September 15, 2008): Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, New England, New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, Delaware, West Virginia, and Virginia. Also to allow you to plan ahead, the clubs in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, and Alaska are scheduled for space in the January-February 2009 issue. Send your reports to cynthia@parchmentfarm.com. The ASCA® Foundation By your donation to Epilepsy Research or the Phenome Project through the ASCA® Foundation, you can help ASCA® benefit our breed immeasurably. Please send your donation made out to The ASCA® Foundation to the ASCA® Business Office, 6091 E. State Highway 21, Bryan TX 77808 (new address!) and be sure to indicate that your donation is for the Epilepsy Research or the Phenome Project. Along with these two projects, the ASCA® Foundation is also the home of the Cee Hambo Education Trust. You can make donations to that Fund as well. This education Trust is in memory of Cee Hambo and provides a scholarship for ASCA® Members. Information about the scholarship and applications for this year's $500 award
are available from the Business Office or at the ASCA.org website under "Forms and Rulebooks." From Ally Bryant we have a report on the epilepsy research that is being conducted by U of Missouri with partial funding by the ASCA® Foundation: Hi Everyone, UMo is still working on the data from the first set of samples that were digitized in October of 2007. They found three suspect gene areas. Two of the areas have already been analyzed and only weak indicators were discovered. Unfortunately, not enough that they felt they were significant. So now they are analyzing the third area. I asked what that might mean. They thought it might be that there are different forms of epilepsy or different causes. Unfortunately, they didn't discover a 'smoking gun' area like they were hoping for. However, they are still looking. They are still analyzing the data and they still want samples from affected dogs and relatives. If they don't find something from this set of data, they want to send more samples to Finland to get more data. The more data they have, the easier it is to see patterns. They said they would send me more detailed a report on Monday. I'll forward anything I get along. In the meantime, keep those samples coming in! Information about the study and how to submit samples can be found at: http://www.canine- epilepsy.net. Thanks, Ally And this from Dr. Gary Johnson, the researcher at the University of Missouri who the ASCA® Foundation supported with our Epilepsy Donations last year:
Here is the synopsis of our Australian Shepherd epilepsy research which I promised you. You may remember that a few years ago we tried unsuccessfully to map the Australian Shepherd epilepsy locus by using a conventional genetic map consisting of microsatellite markers. Late last year we began a second attempt to map the epilepsy locus using a different strategy known as allele association mapping. We selected 64 DNA samples from Australian shepherds: 32 from epilepsy-affected dogs (cases) and 32 epilepsy-free relatives of affected dogs (controls). Owners of the cases were contacted to confirm the age at onset (the ages of the dogs was when they had their first observed seizures). Owners of the controls were contacted to confirm that their dogs remained seizure-free. The samples were sent to Finland and then forwarded to a laboratory in France where they were analyzed with SNPchip technology at 50,000 known marker sites throughout all of the chromosomes. Unfortunately, statistical analysis failed to identify the hoped for single strong signal where the cases tested different than the controls. The lack of a single strong signal suggests that there may be more than one genetic cause of epilepsy among the Australian Shepherds in our collection. There were, however, three weak signals on three different chromosomes. These signals were too weak to eliminate the possibility that they resulted by random chance and have nothing to do with epilepsy. Nonetheless, an alternative explanation is that one or more of the signals represent the chromosomal locations of an epilepsy locus responsible for a subset of the affected Australian Shepherds. Therefore we reviewed the existing scientific literature about the known genes near each of the weak signals; and, at each
site, we identified a plausible candidate gene which was associated with seizures in people and/or in laboratory rodents. Next we examined the individual test results for all of the “cases” at each weak signal to determine which cases contributed to the subset of cases that tested different than the controls. Finally we used DNA from the contributing cases to search for mutations in important regions for the three candidate genes. We have completed our examination of two of the candidate genes without identifying any mutations. We are now just beginning our examination of the third candidate gene. If we find an epilepsycausing mutation in this third gene, we will have discovered one cause of Australian Shepherd epilepsy and we can begin looking for additional causes. If not, we will provide additional Australian Shepherd cases and controls for SNPchip analysis in hopes of obtaining a stronger signal. In addition, we are beginning SNPchip studies of epilepsy in many other dog breeds, some of which may have a single predominant cause of epilepsy. When we find epilepsycausing mutations in other breeds we will test to see if these mutations are also responsible for some of the Australian Shepherd epilepsy cases. Blood samples from additional epilepsy-affected Australian Shepherds and from their epilepsy-free close relatives are requested and could prove critical the continuing search for the mutations responsible for epilepsy in Australian Shepherds.
Committee resumes – Old and New ASCA®’s new Genetics & Health Committee This new ASCA committee is up and running, but they could us a few new Members. They will communicate with ASHGI and keep track of Aussie health issues and genetic research projects with the goal of providing education to the ASCA Membership and assisting the ASCA Foundation. If you are interested in being considered for appointment to this new ASCA Committee, please send your resume to Jo Kimes at jo.kimes@imsday.com The ASCA® Board decided at their April 2006 Meetings that Committee resumes are being sought for all Committees at all times. Even if there aren’t openings, we will hold them until the next Nationals so that you can be considered at that time to fill the Committee for which you have applied! If you are interested in serving on any ASCA® Committee, please send your resume to Executive Secretary, Jo Kimes, jo.kimes@imsday.com. The Board is taking resumes for the Strategic Planning Committee The Strategic Planning Committee will consist of three Board Members and up to three ASCA members. The primary tasks of this committee will be to formulate and document a one- to three-year plan in the following areas: organizational finances, information technology, programs, Board and officer organizational structure and functions, business office structure and processing. Further, the Strategic Planning Committee will provide a yearly document at the General Membership Meeting with clearly defined purposes, goals, objectives and priorities of the ASCA organization; ensuring that the most effective use of resources is focused on key
priorities, organizational improvements and providing a mechanism for measuring progress. ASCA® Program Rule of the Issue – Did you know? Each issue, we will be highlighting a program rule just as an FYI. From the ASCA® Agility Rules and Regulations: 4.1.2 Standard Course Time The officiating judge shall be responsible for establishing the Standard Course Time (SCT). The judge shall measure the course using a measuring wheel to determine the course distance and then calculate the Standard Course Time (SCT) according to the level of the class, the difficulty of the course and any environmental conditions which may exist. The table below lists the recommended MAXIMUM Yards per Second (YPS) for the different levels and height groups. Any deviation from the following table shall be reported along with the reasons, for the deviation below the recommended Maximum Yards per Second (YPS), in the after-trial Judge’s report. At no time may a judge ever ask a dog to exceed the recommended Maximum Yards Per Second (YPS). Effective 01/01/08
Yards Per Second Small Medium Novice 2.25 2.5 Open 2.75 3.0 Elite 3.25 3.5
Large 2.75 3.25 3.75
Judges should convert course distance from feet to yards by dividing the number of feet shown on the measuring wheel by 3. The course yardage (# of feet shown on the measuring wheel divided by 3) should then be divided by the maximum YPS shown in the chart based on the class level and height division. This number should be carried out to the NEAREST 1/100th (i.e.. two decimal places or xx.xx) of a second. For example, 34.246 should be used as 34.25 seconds. And 34.243 shall be used as 35.24 seconds. The calculated SCT shall then be recorded on the judge’s yardage sheet and handed to the score table. In every case, the arithmetic of the computation of SCT shall be independently checked by the Trial Chair, Trial Secretary, or score-table personnel PRIOR to posting and recording the trial results. Effective 01/01/08 One fault point or part of a point will be assessed for each second or fraction of a second over the SCT. The time shall always be measured in 1/100ths of a second. A judge may establish a maximum course time, after which the dog and handler will be dismissed from the ring.